The Kronstadt Rebellion - Extract from How the Workers Took Power: The 1917 Russian Revolution by Sandra Bloodworth

In the circumstances of Russia, given the backward nature of the economy, plus the destruction wrought by the World War and then three years of civil war, foreign invasion and economic blockade by the West, the options narrowed very quickly. In 1921 this confronts us in all its stark reality. A sign that the workers' state was in dire trouble was the Kronstadt rebellion in March. This former centre of revolutionary zeal, previously a strong base for the Bolsheviks (now renamed as the Communist Party of the Soviet Union) became a flashpoint for all the discontents bred by three years of bitter civil war and the resulting poverty and devastation.

Now that the threat of the Whites (counter-revolutionary forces) had receded, the suffering was increasingly laid at the door of the Communist Party. The Bolsheviks' brutal crushing of the Kronstadt revolt is often held up as evidence that it was the very nature of the party that led to the Stalinist bureaucracy of the later years. A more accurate assessment is what Lenin said at the time: "The Kronstadt events were like a flash of lighting which threw more of a glare upon reality than anything else." [1]

It may be legitimate to argue that the Bolsheviks over-reacted, although it cannot be discounted that a victory for the rebellion would have opened the way to a new offensive from the Whites, who were backing it. Anarchists and others who hold up this rebellion and the Bolsheviks' response argue that this shows that the Bolsheviks were authoritarian from the start. The Kronstadt rebellion is held up as a revolutionary challenge to the Bolsheviks' totalitarian dictatorship. However the most recent archives available reveal a completely different picture. Kronstadt was no longer a stronghold of revolutionary soldiers. But the revolutionary soldiers still there actually organised against the rebellion, as did the workers on the Island. The uprising was led by pro-Tsarist generals who said openly that their call for 'soviets without Bolsheviks' was just a way of cloaking their action in the rhetoric of the revolution, that they intended taking power themselves. [2] No doubt they were able to tap into growing discontent among the layers of the population who were not steeped in the revolutionary traditions of the most advanced workers, but that does not make it legitimate. It was a rebellion with backing from counter-revolutionaries against a workers' state under siege. In early 1921 it was still possible to hope that the revolutionary movements in some Euripean countries might triumph. It would have been sheer capitulation and abandonment of the revolutionary goals for which millions had made such sacrifices to have risked the regime's survival because of the rising discontent.

The Kronstadt tragedy was, as Lenin realised, a blinding revelation of the drastic circumstances the revolution faced. It was not any part of the cause of its defeat. To argue that it was is to ignore the problem of isolation and therefore to accept the Stalinist ideology that socialism can be built in one country. And in light of the latest archival evidence it is tantamount to supporting the outright counter-revolution. Lenin spelt out what was necessary, if they were to go on to build socialism, at the Party Congress in March 1921.
'here industrial workers are in a minority, and the petty farmers are the vast majority. In such a country, the socialist revolution can triumph only on two conditions. First, if it is given timely support by a socialist revolution in one or several advanced countries ... The second condition is agreement between the proletariat, which is exercising its dictatorship, that is, holds the state power, and the majority of the peasant population.' [3]
With these two problems in mind, the Communist Party Congress, with hardly any debate or dissent, introduced what became known as the New Economic Policy (NEP) which ended grain requisitioning from the peasants. Instead, they would be taxed and able to use whatever profits they could make as they decided. In other words, it allowed the reintroduction of the market. In fact, to try to hold on with the prospect of being rescued by the international revolution, the Congress conceded virtually all of the demands of the Kronstadters except theiranti-democratic call for 'soviets without Bolsheviks.' Perhaps if the Bolsheviks had made these concessions more quickly, they could have spared the lives of those killed in the fighting that put down the rebellion. But let's be clear. If this had not led to a resurgance of the reactionaries, if it had avoided violence - none of which was inevitable - it would not have made on iota of a difference to the outcome of the revolution in the long run. Kronstadt, the reintroduction of the market, the bureaucratic degeneration of the party as it ruled over an increasingly impossible situation - none of these are the cause of the counter-revolution that engulfed them. They are the effect of the failure of the revolutions in the West and the isolation of the workers' state in Russia.


Citations:
1. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol 32, p. 169.
2. Daniel Lopez and Corey Oakley, 'New facts explode anarchist myth' in Socialist Alternative, no 100, March 2006, available at www.sa.org.au. Original source at www.marxist.com/History/Trotsky_was_right.html
3. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol 32, p. 125.